> I try to (re-)learn math periodically because I feel like I should, like how one ought to eat one's vegetables and one ought to exercise, but extrinsic motiva

> I try to (re-)learn math periodically because I feel like I should, like how one ought to eat one's vegetables and one ought to exercise, but extrinsic motivation is the thing that's lacking. Personally, if it were “just relearn calculus and move from there” I think I’d be able to motivate myself. At that point I’m still pretty close to the problems and tasks that interest me. But the reality is I spent much of middle school and high school wasting my time doing things other than math, so in reality I’d have to go much further back and relearn all the prerequisite stuff, and the prerequisite stuff to that, etc. By that point Im so divorced from the reason I wanted to try and relearn math in the first places and I just get bored and give up.